


What a Difference a Few Extra Seconds Make

by Solstice0612



Series: Vexing Questions [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s08e17 Reckoning (2), Episode: s08e18 Threads, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 15:01:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1862184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solstice0612/pseuds/Solstice0612
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Did Daniel stop all Replicators and the clock of the SGC’s self-destruct mechanism when the Dakara Superweapon was activated? Written as a tag to Threads. An independent vignette in the Vexing Questions series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What a Difference a Few Extra Seconds Make

**Author's Note:**

> My sincere thanks to my beta Jan Kent for her generous help. Disclaimer: These characters belong to MGM, I am just playing with them. Not copyright infringement intended.

With a fresh cup of coffee in his hand, Dr. Daniel Jackson sat at his desk trying to shape one of his oddest adventures as a SG-1 member into a user-friendly mission report. Finding the right words was proving to be a challenge, for how to describe such confusing confrontations with beings that looked like one thing but were quite another? One after the other, he had faced a Replicator Sam, two rather different Omas, and a very affable coffee lover who turned out to be Anubis. And all the while, the very life of the galaxy was hanging on the balance.

 

Daniel’s attention was so absorbed in improving the words he saw on the computer screen that he never noticed his teammate Colonel Sam Carter knocking on his open door.

 

Undeterred, Sam entered the comfortable penumbra of the office, illuminated by the golden light of the single desk lamp. She helped herself to the aromatic coffee and sat on the other side of the desk, making enough noise with her chair to announce her presence.

 

“Sam, uhm, sorry, I didn’t…. Would you like some… Oh, you already got it…. Ok, so…. Hi!”

 

“Hi Daniel!”

 

Sam smiled back and drank from her cup, allowing Daniel enough time to pull his mind away from the computer and adjust to her presence. She had questions and a few nagging fears that needed to be put to rest. She was practically alone in the world now, and Daniel was the closest thing she had to family. She wanted to clear the air.

 

“I hope you don’t mind me being here.”

 

“Not at all. Can I help you with anything?”

 

Sam had already decided that she would get to the point in an indirect way.

 

“Actually, yes. I was working on my report regarding the Dakara Superweapon, and there are a few things I would like to clarify. I read your debrief transcript, but is a bit sketchy in parts.”

 

“I was just working on the full report.”

 

“Great. I look forward to reading the full version. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Is that ok? I mean, this is in part to satisfy my own curiosity but also I want the timeline of events in my own report to correlate with yours.”

 

Daniel tried to hide his apprehension.

 

The image of Carter’s Replicator copy stabbing him to death on board the alien ship still haunted his nightmares and made being around his friend less than easy. But Sam had suffered serious losses of her own. Her father Jacob and his symbiote Selmak had died, and her relationship to her fiancé Pete Shanahan had unraveled leaving their wedding plans in the dust.

 

Sam looked a little lost.

 

Daniel decided to answer her questions but sparing her feelings as much as he could.

 

“Sure Sam, what do you need to know?”

 

She did not want to overthink things, so she jumped right in.

 

“In the debriefing you said that when you were in the Replicator ship you were aware of what was happening elsewhere. How did you do that?”

 

Daniel studied his coffee cup with great interest while he considered his answer.

 

“It was her, the Replicator that looked like you.”

 

Sam raised her gaze towards Daniel, but all she saw in his eyes was kindness.

 

“She hurt you, didn’t she?”

 

“She tried persuasion. She did that hand in the head thing and pretended to be Oma Desala, the Ancient who helped me ascend…..”

 

Sam felt a small moment of relief. Daniel would have been uncomfortable, but there were worse things. Yet, he had more to say.

 

“… what she wanted was for me to freely open my mind to whatever Ancient knowledge is still trapped in there. She found the weapon at Dakara and directed her ship over there to eliminate that threat. But Sam, you beat her to it. When we arrived, the weapon was ready for deployment.”

 

“Not quite. Had it not been for the Replicators stopping all at once we wouldn’t have had enough time. Was it you?”

 

A shy smile briefly formed in Daniel’s lips.

 

“In a way. The human-form Replicator,” Daniel did not want to call her by Sam’s name, “was not a convincing Oma so her ruse was over soon. Yet, she was puzzled by Oma. She could not understand why somebody so powerful, to use her exact words, ‘merely stands by and does nothing.’ Then I knew. The real Oma Desala was also there, observing. I opened my mind to her and then an intriguing thought came to me: to enter the Replicator’s mind and plant in it an idea so powerful but so distracting that it would make her lose track of her mechanical brethren until it was too late.”

 

“What idea?”

 

“Ascension.”

 

“You mean, for the other me?”

 

“Sam, the human-form Replicator may have stolen your shape and even your memories, but she was nothing like you.”

 

“I know. I’m not sure why I let her trick me.”

 

“For what it’s worth, that taught me to never trust her the way I trust you, which was very helpful. You are not responsible for her actions in any way.”

 

Sam smiled, thankful for Daniel’s gift of absolution.

 

“Did she attempt to ascend?”

 

“The notion that ascension would give her limitless power was too tempting for a power hungry being like her. But her distraction allowed me to temporarily stop the Replicators. Of course, that pretty much determined what her next move was gonna be. The imperative to pragmatically observe an ascension overcame all other considerations. She never saw it coming. As a machine, she was not able to compute the process of my ascension, which slowed her and her brethren enough to prevent them from finding any effective defensive measures against the superweapon, so it destroyed them all.”

 

“She killed you, didn’t she? Oh god, Daniel, I’m so sorry.”

 

Daniel swallowed hard, emotionally steadying himself. Complete honesty would not help anyone.

 

“Sam, I appreciate the sentiment, but this has nothing to do with you. It was a strategic decision on my part. Alone in space, trapped in a Replicator ship that was about to be destroyed? My prospects were nil. And Oma was there, which meant that there was only one way to go.”

 

“So that’s when you ascended?”

 

“Actually, I only ascended part of the way.”

 

“How is that possible?”

 

“I arrived at an ‘in-between’ space. Somehow Oma made it look like a diner I went to after my parents’ funeral.”

 

“You mean, the one Nick took you to for waffles?”

 

“Yeah, to sweeten the pill that I’d be on my own. It sort of worked out the same way this time.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“At first I thought I was at the Ascended Diner so Oma could give me her customary warnings about leaving all burdens behind and not interfering with us Lowers. But now I know that she wanted me to witness something important.”

 

Sam drank her coffee, giving Daniel time to find the right words.

 

“This is what I learned: long ago, a man convinced Oma to help him ascend. When she realized he was Anubis and thoroughly evil, she deeply regretted what she had done. Her mistake was compounded by the fact that she had acted in complete defiance of her fellow Ascended. Outraged, the Others de-ascended Anubis, but not all the way. He could act within the parameters of a Lower being, but with the knowledge of an Ascended one. In such an in-between position, he reached unprecedented levels of destruction, which the Others saw as a fitting punishment for Oma’s continuous disobedience.”

 

“Didn’t the other Ascended care about the fate of the galaxy?”

 

“Sam, what the Others considered fair or unjust is beyond my comprehension but there is a frightening symmetry to the solution they allowed to take place, since it equally prevents Anubis from inflicting further harm, while keeping Oma from interacting with us.”

 

Daniel got up to get more coffee. Sam waited in silence until he returned to his seat. She knew that whatever her friend was going to say next would not be easy for him.

 

“I believe that I was there to witness Oma’s atonement. She paid for her terrible mistake with her ultimate sacrifice. When Anubis activated the Stargate system and the superweapon to wipe out all galactic life she attacked him, engaging him in an eternal battle that will keep them both mutually contained, forever.”

 

Sam’s blue eyes opened wide at the thought of two powerful beings eternally trapped in a mortal struggle. Then she remembered one of her questions.

 

“Daniel, something curious happened here on base when Dakara dialed our Gate. We activated the SGC’s self-destruct mechanism in the off chance that we could bury our Gate and block the deadly effects of the weapon, but the clock stopped 1.26 seconds before detonation and then the Stargate disconnected on its own. We wondered if you had caused this to happened. It really saved us, you know?”

 

The joy everyone had felt at their sudden reprieve animated Sam’s face.

 

“Sam, I can offer you no proof, but it was Oma. I learned that it was her who pulled me away from Anubis when I had the power to stop him, which doomed Abydos. I think she wanted to atone for that as well. Right before her sudden attack on Anubis, she must have neutralized his plans by disengaging not only the Dakara weapon but other related devices of mass destruction activated in its wake. All happened very fast and her actions took the Ascended by surprise. They did nothing to stop her, so she was able to prevent our destruction without opposition. Perhaps that is what they all wanted her to do all along.”

 

“So Oma saved us?”

 

“Yes. I was powerless to do anything.”

 

“I am very sorry for your friend. Her fate is not an easy one.”

 

“I hope that one day the Others will be merciful to Oma and eliminate Anubis’s threat for good.”

 

“I am glad I understand what happened. I was worried…”

 

“Sam, she was never you. We are good friends and that will never change.”

 

“Thank you Daniel. So no more ascending?”

 

“Highly unlikely.”

 

“I’ll miss the dramatic re-entries…”

 

Daniel found the surface of his desk fascinating. But then his lips shaped into a smirk and his blue eyes sparkled with mischief.

 

“I still have that flag.”

 

Sam tried not to giggle, but failed.

 

 

The End

 


End file.
